Every small business needs a solid marketing program
. There are a lot of companies out there however being run by people who do not have a solid background in marketing and this leads to some of their problems. Most people who have not studied marketing academically do not understand the true scope of the subject. This article is going to go over the four fundamental aspects of a good marketing plan, often referred to as the four p's. They are: product, price, promotion and place.
First of all there is the product. Often the product is not an actual thing but is a service. For instance take professional baseball. The revenues from baseball come primarily from ticket sales at games. Many people would say that tickets are the product that they offer. This, however, is stopping way short of the actual value sold. The truth is that people go to a baseball game for entertainment. People love the culture behind baseball and every team has a unique flavor.
The actual service that baseball teams sell is entertainment. When baseball teams first started to realize this is when they started building stadiums that offered more than just a place to sit and watch the game. They started building mega stadiums which offered something for everyone and not just the baseball enthusiast. This ads to the entertainment value and goes beyond traditional baseball but is incredibly successful at generating revenue and profits.
The second aspect of marketing is price. Often small business people have the misconception that the lowest price is the best one. This is wrong because as a smaller business you will almost never be able to compete on price. The larger corporations will almost always win over on this one and you will be left with nothing. The key is to find something else that you can compete on to justify the higher price.
The third aspect is the promotion this is where the advertising agency comes in that will handle actually making the ads and commercials. The things that you need to be worried about here are your brand image and the advertising agency communicating that image consistently and accurately.
The fourth is the distribution channels. The truth is that the way you sell something needs to agree with the way people like to buy them. For instance, no one wants to buy a car from a catalog.